


Mutual Division

by 3RatMoon



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, FatT Rarepair Swap, Other, Pining, this is a sad one y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 14:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14792489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3RatMoon/pseuds/3RatMoon
Summary: Grand Magnificent can no longer be convinced. He stared down his creation and saw the truth: they were meant to be together.





	Mutual Division

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Friends at the Table Rarepair Swap week, attolis!!
> 
> This was such a good event. I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of characters, but not a lot of them make it onto the page, and so being directed to MAKE A THING was really fun. Thank you <3

Time stopped mattering partway into the ruined cockpit. Everything warped and stretched the way that he imagined it would on the Event Horizon of a black hole, seconds rapidly becoming days, years, centuries. Grand Magnificent could perceive pasts previously beyond his comprehension with ease, could flip through possibilities in the reflections of the glass like slides of film. He had longed for a viewpoint like this one, ancient and sharp and broad and singular. He could only describe the experience as Sublime.

_ No. _ The thought came from them, not through word or signal, but through simple knowledge.  _ No,  _ we _ are Sublime. _

Grand didn’t realize he had sat down— didn’t remember where the body of the Doyenne had gone or how there was still somewhere to sit at all. He looked back at the glass, and he saw himself, just as he had observed over the weeks and weeks he spent working on the construction of this body. Then, a flash, and he saw himself making the other machine— the failed prototype— saw again its misshapen form, the frustrating  _ wrongness _ of work and vision fallen short of perfection. Another flash: he saw himself at the party on Memorious, the time that he realized he couldn’t keep doing what he was doing. Then, he saw himself if he had stayed anyway, falling further and further into a slump until he lost his place in the world of Art altogether.

But that didn’t happen. He left that party, left so much of his previous life behind and threw it wholeheartedly into his new life on Quire. And after his previous failure, he persisted, further, until he made this— this body. This new incarnation for a being of Power and Will strong enough to pluck a planet from its orbit and rehouse it at the centre of a galaxy.

And Grand Magnificent— he saw himself in a totally new way. The way Independence saw him.

The idea was: Art can be made with an audience in mind, but it’s never guaranteed to resonate with that audience, or with anyone at all. Art is only ever made for one person in the end, and that is the artist. This time, Independence was the art, and as far as Independence was concerned, Grand couldn’t have been a better person to make it.

Grand Magnificent laughed suddenly. “Echo’s gonna be real mad, huh…” he said out loud.

“Grand—” 

Startled to have his internal world speak back, Grand Magnificent looked down. Even was standing there, in front of him, looking up at him in his place with Independence, a determined but sad look on his face. 

“Grand, please don’t do this,” Even said. He had picked up the weapon that Grand had dropped when he stared Independence down and saw the truth.

_ He doesn’t understand, _ said the Divine. Grand looked at the reflections in the glass, and he saw Even back in Sculpture City, crouched over Independence, momentarily entranced, his symbiote calling out to meld with something so massively powerful. Of course, Grand knew what happened after that.  _ He could have understood, but he turned away. _

“You don’t get it, Even,” Grand Magnificent said to him, maybe more kindly than Independence, though not by much. “No one does. That’s why it has to be me.” Distantly, he felt himself smiling. “We were made for each other. No one alive knows what that’s like. Not even the Excerpt.”

Even flinched at that, glanced back to where Belgard and Signet were watching the scene cautiously with the other members of their team. His eyebrows were furrowed when he turned back.

“We don’t want to lose you, Grand,” Even said, “None of us. Me, Gig, Echo…”

Grand glanced at the reflections and saw Echo Reverie there, the way they looked the last time they saw each other. They were gone, of course, trying to help the evacuation of the Fleet with Gig, but if they were there with him, now…

The potentials turned past Grand like the facets of a crystal. He saw Echo’s face, contorted with anger, then streaked with tears, then completely emotionless, like stone.

_ But they are  _ not _ here, _ said Independence.  _ They left for a new mission once the one that brought you together was over. _

“They saved me,” Grand found himself saying out loud. “They didn’t have to.”

There was a flash in the glass, and Grand saw Echo break through the old palace window almost like they would burst from the reflections in the cockpit. Their deep blue hair flowed out behind them, and their sword shone in the late afternoon light of the day the assassin called The Duke nearly killed him. Echo was power and grace and will coiled tight. Aesthetically, they were beautiful, but more than that, Grand trusted them, maybe admired them. They always, as long as he knew them, had a kind of integrity— an understanding of right and wrong that only they knew. Grand Magnificent would have been lying if he had said that he didn’t draw some inspiration for the design of Independence from them.

_ Then, you understand why it is folly to reach for them, _ said Independence, not unkindly.  _ We are each only ourselves, and we each only have ourselves in the end. You make connections, but it’s only a matter of time… _

“It’s only a matter of time before they leave,” Grand Magnificent said out loud. In the reflections, he saw Echo standing again, wearing that flat expression. For a moment, he might have seen something like sadness there. Resignation. Then, slowly, Grand watched Echo turn away. 

“It’s only a matter of time… so why delay the inevitable?”

“Grand…” Even’s voice filtered up from below, reminding Grand of his audience. 

He and Independence moved fluidly together, turning away a little so he could speak to Even over his shoulder. “You can send them my regards. Gig, too.”

Grand could see Even’s sad expression, the way his hands tightened around the weapon before finally dropping it. “We’ll come back for you, Grand,” he said. “We won’t… we won’t just leave you here.”

“Don’t lose any sleep over it,” Grand replied easily. “This is how it’s meant to be.”

Even didn’t say anything else when Independence turned and walked away.

Still, after everything, after months and years with nothing to do but live free on his own, making sculptures out of the strange stuff on Volition and watching the planet expel axiom after axiom, Grand Magnificent would see a flash of blue hair in the corner of his eye. But, when he turned to look, he would just see his own face staring back at him.


End file.
